Debate contribution: Health and Social Care Transformation

Debate contribution by Mr Alan Chambers on 6 October 2026.

MLA: Mr Alan Chambers
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 6 October 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Health and Social Care Transformation
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5777080

Text

First, I commend the Minister of Health for his confirmation today that Northern Ireland is leading the way as the first area in the whole of the United Kingdom to provide a 24/7 thrombectomy service for our entire population. Today's announcement, coming so soon after last week's confirmation that we are now, at long last, making progress in reducing the bowel cancer screening age, shows what can happen with a Minister who is resolutely focused on delivery. Delivery is exactly what our health service needs right now. Everyone in the Chamber knows the pressure that it is under. Patients are waiting far too long, and staff are carrying a heavy burden. The question is whether the Alliance Party motion helps in any way at all to change that. In reality, such motions, in the current political environment, are the last thing that our health service needs or that the staff want to hear. Regrettably, the proposers of the motion have taken a serious issue and turned it into a party political charge sheet. They condemn the Minister, invoke the BMA's starkest warning and, noticeably, offer no practical route to safer services, shorter waits or sustainable reform. That is not leadership; it is blame poorly dressed up as scrutiny. Neither the Health Minister nor his predecessor have ever sought to claim that the problems have been solved. They both openly acknowledge that reform has been incomplete, and services remain under severe pressure, but the Alliance Party should explain how a blanket accusation against successive Ministers helps the present one to deliver the changes that patients need. As I set out in my initial comments, their record is not one of inaction. We have a Health Minister taking decisions that are directly benefiting patients and their families, building on the foundations that the previous Minister, Mike Nesbitt, laid. Since the restoration of the Executive two and a half years ago, the record of delivery on reducing so many of our longest waiting times is clear to see, although I rarely hear the Alliance Party acknowledge that or pay credit to the staff and services, including the many examples of health service transformation in elective care, responsible for the reduction. Elective hubs, rapid diagnosis centres (RDCs) and mega-clinics are adding capacity. Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) and the neighbourhood model are bringing support closer to home. The Minister is driving that work while facing massive budget and workforce constraints. The honest test is whether those efforts keep improving access and outcomes, not whether a motion can make the bleakest possible political case. Ten years of health reform cannot fairly be reduced to a convenient line about ministerial failure. The system has endured the pandemic, rising demands, sustained financial pressure and prolonged periods without devolved government. Having phrases such as "reform by service collapse" in the motion is not putting forward a plan. What does Alliance propose for the workforce, for funding and for service capacity? What changes would it make, and how would it ensure that they were safe, evidence-based and shaped through staff and community involvement? The motion answers none of those questions. It demands political leadership, whilst, at the same time, it badly misreads the mood of the wider public by making sweeping political attacks. Minister Robbie Butler cannot have been any clearer when he said that listening to patients and communities and weighing up patient safety and workforce sustainability is part of what goes into making difficult decisions responsibly. Do the signatories to the motion really agree? People want their representatives to be focused on delivery, not for them to use the health service as a stage for party manoeuvring. They want honest scrutiny, not political stunts such as today's motion.

619 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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